Eligibility Rules

Minister Cancellieri says final text will be approved before election. Convicted criminals and plea bargain beneficiaries no longer eligible

ROME – The appointment is set for tomorrow at the interior ministry, prefect Bruno Frattasi, head of the ministry’s legislative affairs office, has announced. For the past month, Mr Frattasi has been drafting the delegate decree on the ineligibility of those with criminal convictions in preparation for the 2013 general election. The draft, which he said “comprises ten or so articles”, is now ready, as interior minister Anna Maria Cancellieri confirmed yesterday during a break at the 4 November National Unity and Armed Forces celebrations. Ms Cancellieri said: “We are working on it. There will be a meeting later in the week with ministers Severino and Patroni Griffi to close the last loopholes in the document.”

Tomorrow, Ms Cancellieri will be meeting her colleagues Paolo Severino (justice) and Filippo Patroni Griffi (public administration) at the interior ministry to sort out the remaining issues. The aim is to secure approval in the Council of Ministers within two weeks at the most. The document will then be presented to Parliament. However, the government’s aim is to secure approval in time for the upcoming elections: “That much is certain”, commented the interior minister yesterday. In addition, the government intends put in place before the end of the legislature new regulations on transparency and incompatibility regarding executive appointments.

For example, anyone who has held a position in a local administration – say, a municipal cabinet member – will be barred for one year from holding executive positions in the same local authority. It is a race against time because the new rules barring those with criminal convictions from standing will have to be in place well ahead of polling day, since the parties generally present their lists 45 days or more before the vote. Mr Frattasi noted: “It is nonetheless true that, quite apart from the law or the principles of judicial doctrine, the political parties can always carry out an action of ‘self-cleaning’ [in English in the original – Trans.] of their own lists, as is right and proper”. Parliament has delegated the drafting of eligibility rules to the government. This procedure entails approval of the text by the Council of Ministers before it goes back to Parliament and is submitted to the committees for an obligatory but not binding opinion. Committees at the Chamber of Deputies and Senate have 60 days to express an opinion but may do so in as little as a week. Details aside, the recent appeal by the head of state, Giorgio Napolitano, for the moral revival of politics in the wake of the latest scandals means any delay would be embarrassing, although at present 21 parliamentarians have final convictions and a further 125 are under investigation or have been convicted in first or second-level courts.

The terms of the delegation – set by the Senate and Chamber, and not by the government in the latest anti-corruption decree – ban anyone with a final conviction of more than two years for crimes of “serious social alarm” or against the public administration. But there could still be more changes. Mr Frattasi explains: “Our template for the decree treats plea bargains as being equivalent to final convictions”. What remains to be decided is the duration of the state of ineligibility. This means that unless the judge handed down a life ban from public office, the person convicted will at some time be able to stand again. The decree will serve to clear up when. Convicted but rehabilitated criminals will also be able to stand, even those who in the past have committed serious crimes such as terrorism. There is one further issue to be solved. For the time being, tax fraud is not one of the crimes that entail ineligibility. Tomorrow’s meeting at the interior ministry could, however, lead to “lengthening of the list of impeding situations and broadening of offences”, said sources at the ministry’s office of legislative affairs. In plain language, this means that tax offences could be added to the list of seriously socially alarming crimes. The upshot would be a substantial lengthening of the list of politicians ineligible to stand at the next election. Things will be clearer tomorrow. Yesterday, Ms Cancellieri was unequivocal: “The meeting with ministers Severino and Patroni Griffi will close the final loopholes in the document”. For now, those ineligibility loopholes are fairly broad.